Brazilian Portuguese is spoken by almost all of the 200 million people living in Brazil as well as by the several million Brazilian emigrants living
abroad. Brazilian Portuguese is different from European Portuguese in much of the same way that British English differs from American English.
Although lexicon and grammar rules remain very similar, slang and informal speech can be quite different.
Due to Portugal's colonization of Brazil in the 16th century, large numbers of Portuguese immigrants, and the hundreds of thousands of slaves
they brought with them (which generally ended up learning Portuguese), Portuguese quickly became the national language of Brazil. Portugal's
government made great efforts in expanding the use of Portuguese throughout the colony for a multitude of reasons.
The language has also been influenced by other languages, namely the languages it supplanted. There are many native languages that are, and even more
that were, spoken in Brazil before Portugal colonized it. There were also many African languages that were spoken by the numerous slaves and other
languages still spoken by non Portuguese European and Asian immigrants. Although minimal, these other languages have contributed to what is now
Brazilian Portuguese.
More information about Brazilian Portuguese can be found at Wikipedia.
